


Angel in the Emerald City

by MelayneSeahawk



Series: Good Omens Kink Meme [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book Elements, Gen, Good Omens Kink Meme, Seattle, Show Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 05:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21350995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelayneSeahawk/pseuds/MelayneSeahawk
Summary: In 1800, A.Z. Fell opened a bookshop in London Soho, and Aziraphale narrowly avoided being recalled back Upstairs.In 1862, Aziraphale received a written missive from Heaven, thick white parchment and heavy gold ink and all that pretentious nonsense.“I’m being transferred,” Aziraphale complained, an unangelic pout on his face.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Good Omens Kink Meme [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1535939
Comments: 2
Kudos: 59
Collections: Good Omens Kink Meme





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> written for the [Good Omens Kink Meme](https://good-omens-kink.dreamwidth.org/) on dreamwidth, prompt: [Aziraphale and Crowley settle somewhere other than London](https://good-omens-kink.dreamwidth.org/616.html?thread=317032#cmt317032)
> 
> unbetaed

In 1800, A.Z. Fell opened a bookshop in London Soho, and Aziraphale narrowly avoided being recalled back Upstairs.

In 1862, Aziraphale received a written missive from Heaven, thick white parchment and heavy gold ink and all that pretentious nonsense.

“I’m being transferred,” Aziraphale complained, an unangelic pout on his face. He and Crowley were in St. James’s Park, feeding the ducks. Originally, they had planned to meet because Crowley wanted a favor, but the sudden news had taken priority.

Crowley made a sympathetic moue of distaste. “Anywhere interesting, at least?” he asked. “China, perhaps? I know you were a fan of the  _ xiaolongbao _ the last time you were there.”

“Sadly, no. They’re sending me to America.”

“America!” Crowley huffed in disgust, flinging a pellet of bread directly at the head of a particularly forward mallard, ignoring Aziraphale’s disappointed frown. “How dull.”

“My people are interested in this so-called American Experiment,” Aziraphale said with a shrug. “They’re interested in how democracy might affect morality, what with free will and all.”

“Hard to call it a democracy when almost a fifth of your population are slaves,” Crowley said with a sniff. Despite the generally favorable opinion of slavery held by Downstairs, Crowley had never been a supporter.

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed pensively. He had some thoughts on that already. Perhaps talking to that Lincoln fellow, or the intervention of France…. “But yes, it is my plan to close up the shop for now, see how long this assignment holds, maybe move the books if it looks to be long-term.”

Crowley made a vague affirming sound, but his expression was almost unreadable as usual due to his spectacles. To Aziraphale, long familiar with his body language, the other being seemed pensive.

“Oh, you had had a favor to ask, dear boy?” he asked suddenly, remembering.

“Don’t worry about it, angel, you have plenty on your plate,” Crowley said vaguely. He brushed his empty hands together to rid them of crumbs, then shoved one hand in his pocket, fist breaking the line of his ever-elegant black suit. “Let me know where you settle once you arrive?”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said brightly. “I always do.”

***

Aziraphale spent the rest of the war working out of a rowhouse in Georgetown, the oldest neighborhood in the capital, mixed in with the free Black community there. The cities in America didn’t have the patina of age of European cities like London or Paris or especially Rome, but at over a hundred years old, Georgetown would serve well enough. And it was just far enough from the halls of government that he could escape the insufferable one-upmanship at least a little.

Aziraphale got a commendation for the Emancipation Proclamation, even though that lovely Lincoln fellow had written it a month before Aziraphale had arrived in America at all.

Aziraphale was largely pleased with how the war ended -- assassination notwithstanding, and Crowley swore he had nothing to do with it -- and continued to scatter his influence around capital until 1872, when he made arrangements to meet with Crowley in New York.

“It looks like I’ll be staying in America for the long-haul,” he told the demon as they walked along the recently opened Brooklyn Bridge. The view of the dirty river beneath them could not hope to compare to the stately lake and paths of St. James’s Park, but Central Park was more than serviceable, and Aziraphale had heard they were working on new sections to expand its grounds.

“Will you be staying in Washington?” Crowley asked, looking out over the water.

“I don’t think so,” Aziraphale said. “I was thinking somewhere new. Take the Pacific Railroad west, see what there is to see.”

“Lots of sin in those gold rush towns,” Crowley pointed out with a toothy grin.

“Perhaps,” Aziraphale said. “San Francisco sounds nice. Or perhaps that new one, Seattle.”

***

In 1874, A.Z. Fell opened a bookshop in Pioneer Square, Seattle, and settled in to see what the future would hold.


	2. Chapter 2

A.Z. Fell Books, Founded London 1800, survived the Seattle Great Fire in 1889, along with the handful of shops and residences on either side. Some called it a miracle; A.Z. Fell himself just smiled and went back to helping clean up the rubble (and blessing potential gold miners as they came through Seattle’s port on their way to the Klondike). Seattle rebuild around them, becoming less of a logging and mining outpost and more of a real metropolis in its own right.

Aziraphale didn’t spend all his time in Pioneer Square, of course. He flitted around the city, took trips down to San Francisco with some frequency, and often found himself back in Washington DC, attempting to whisper sense into members of Congress; he was particularly disappointed with failing to avert the Spanish-American War.

He joined the Rainier Club when it was reincorporated in 1899, and was present for the opening of the Seattle Symphony in 1903. He shopped at the first farm stalls at Pike Place Market in 1907; he had a favorite Jewish butcher there that he swore was the only place to get proper sausages made in the Old World style.

Aziraphale was well entrenched in the city by the time Crowley decided to join him there in 1912. “I just want somewhere I can get away from the war,” he said, when Aziraphale asked. He settled in an up-and-coming neighborhood called Laurelhurst, one of the wealthier areas of the city, and after that they saw each other with some frequency, both at the Rainier Club and around the city, each going about his own business.

The Great War was hard, but Aziraphale thought it had been harder on Crowley than it was on himself. In America, they were removed from the fighting and the dying, but they both spent a certain amount of time in the trenches, and if Aziraphale caught Crowley blessing the occasional would-be-doomed soldier, he chose not to comment.

They both stood on the picket lines during the General Strike in 1919, then went back to Aziraphale’s shop to argue about socialism and police brutality.

Aziraphale strongly opposed Prohibition, but Crowley was for it. “If you lock up the drink, only criminals will drink it,” he pointed out, and Aziraphale scowled, but the demon would regularly stop by to take Aziraphale to speakeasies he found, where the liquor was smooth and the jazz, in Aziraphale’s rather knowledgeable opinion, was divine.

The Great Depression hit Seattle and the rest of the state hard, but soon the city flourished with new politicians in Olympia and public works projects all over. The US entered World War II in 1941, and Aziraphale despaired over Japanese Internment even as he rejoiced over Boeing supporting the war effort and causing the city to boom.

Aziraphale again found himself in Europe, overseeing the battlefields, and had razed the first concentration camp he’d encountered to the ground in a show of celestial power he hadn’t made in centuries.

“I didn’t do it, angel, I swear,” Crowley said, when Aziraphale marched into the Russian camp where the demon was hiding. “I’d heard the rhetoric and all, but I had no idea they’d started implementing it like this. Would I lie to you?”

Aziraphale stepped back and released Crowley from where he’d been holding him off the ground by his neck against the truck of a tree. “No, you probably wouldn’t,” he said, swiping at his eyes. “I’m sorry, I just…”

“Don’t apologize, angel, certainly not to me,” Crowley said, and after a moment rested a hesitant hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “It’s...a lot. We’ve seen worse.”

“Have we?” Aziraphale asked weakly. “I just want this all to be over.”

“So do I.”

***

Seattle continued to grow after the war, business booming even as the original downtown area declined. Aziraphale fretted, worried for his city, and was ecstatic when the 1962 World’s Fair was announced, bringing arts and culture, the delightful Space Needle and a curious construction called a monorail. Aziraphale dragged Crowley with him to see all the sights once the fair opened, and while the demon grumbled, Aziraphale knew he enjoyed himself immensely as well.

Aziraphale began spending more time in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Despite the Double Header and other gay bars in Pioneer Square, Capitol Hill was becoming the city’s gayborhood, and Aziraphale had always found himself drawn to this particular community. Seattle, he knew, had long been one of the safer places in America to be homosexual, and especially after the events at the Stonewall Inn in New York, visibility and activism were on the rise.

Seattle almost didn’t survive the Boeing bust (“‘Will the last person leaving Seattle turn off the lights?’ That’s funny,” Crowley said. “No, it’s not,” Aziraphale had replied), but Aziraphale did what he could to encourage other industry to take its place. It was actually Crowley who brought Microsoft to the city in 1979, and a tiny part of Aziraphale had never forgiven him.

(Aziraphale had gradually become a coffee drinker after a few decades in America, but he’d always preferred small shops where the owners knew his name. Starbucks was not wholly Crowley’s invention, but he definitely knew that the best way to get an easy rise out of Aziraphale was to bring the distinctive green-on-white cups with their brown sleeves into the bookshop.)

Aziraphale watched the tech boom with some trepidation. He had a small personal computer for tax purposes and the occasional game of Minesweeper, but Crowley was elbow-deep in it, popping down to Silicon Valley and San Francisco pretty regularly. Aziraphale watched Seattle continue to grow and change, pleased with his little corner of the world.

Until, in 2008, he got a phone call from Crowley. “The Antichrist is on Earth. The countdown to Armageddon has begun.”

**Author's Note:**

> this is the beginning of a series; this one ends with the arrival of the Antichrist, the second will cover the events of a Seattle-centric Armageddon, and then after that I'll probably write some vignettes of A&C puttering around Seattle history
> 
> [reblog link](https://melayneseahawk.tumblr.com/post/188891524509/angel-in-the-emerald-city-chapter-1)
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](https://melayneseahawk.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
